Abortion position hypocritical in Catholic hospital's position

Pro-life activists gather Jan. 25 during the March for Life in Washington,… (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI, AFP/Getty…)

January 31, 2013|Paul Carpenter

The question posed in the nation's capital by a little girl from Nazareth was very touching.

Four-year-old Gina Favocci had accompanied her parents, Christine and Robert Favocci, to a "March for Life" and, as Christine was quoted as saying in a front-page story in The Morning Call on Saturday, she asked about abortion.

"She asks me why is it OK to hurt a baby in the mommies' bellies, but it's not OK to hurt a baby when it's out of the mommy's belly," Gina's mother said. "And I don't have an answer for her."

The March for Life is held annually to painfully observe the 40th anniversary of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling, which opened the door to legal abortions in America. The Favoccis were part of a contingent from the Lehigh Valley.

The march was promoted by the National Right to Life Committee, America's biggest anti-abortion organization. It was established in the 1960s by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, but technically was changed into a nonsectarian movement around the time of the Roe ruling in 1973. Nevertheless, it and much of the rest of the anti-abortion movement have been identified with the Catholic Church.

"Church members from across the Lehigh Valley as well as students from the region's Catholic schools joined the ocean of people on the National Mall," Saturday's story said of the observance in Washington.

On Friday, in a Point-Counterpoint feature, Micaiah Bilger of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation expressed a key point of the anti-abortion movement: "We now know that at the moment of conception, the human embryo is a complete, unique life."

That is why a court case in the Rocky Mountains is sure to be troubling.

In 2006, at Saint Thomas More Hospital in Canon City, Colo., Lori Stodghill died when she was seven months pregnant with twin boys. A lawsuit claims the hospital made no effort to save the twins with a cesarean section and they died, too.

There might be medical excuses for that, but the position of the hospital's owner, the Catholic Health Initiatives hospital chain, is that it must not be held accountable because unborn children are not people.

"The defendants argue that to be a 'person' one must at some point have been born alive," District Judge David Thorson said of the hospital chain's position. (The chain operates Catholic hospitals in 14 states, including Saint Clare's Hospital in Sussex, N.J.)

Lower courts agreed, so the Stodghill family appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, and news coverage across the nation ensued. That state's Roman Catholic hierarchy declined to comment on the legal issues, but it was clear that at least some church elements had wavered when it came to whether an unborn child is a person.

While no dollar amount was mentioned in connection with what the family sought, the hospital sued the family for $118,000 in legal fees and even tried to garnish the wages of the father of the twin boys. The hospital, it was reported, tried to make a deal, offering to forget the $118,000 claim if Jeremy Stodghill dropped the appeal.

On Friday, it was reported that three Colorado Roman Catholic bishops will review the situation, reiterating in a letter that human life begins at conception and stating that they would carry out a "full review of this litigation and of the policies and practices … to ensure fidelity and faithful witness to the teachings of the Catholic Church."

Even if they reverse the hospital's position on the lawsuit, it leaves the impression that the church's "life begins at conception" principle was put aside in this case when money was involved.

From now on, it is hard to imagine conflicting demonstrations over the abortion issue that do not mention Saint Thomas More Hospital in Canon City.

I have mixed feelings about abortion, including the views that no free society can impose rules on the unwilling based strictly on religious dogma and, on the other hand, that it's reasonable to prohibit some abortions, as in the case of a viable fetus (a position also taken in the Roe ruling).

Viability is when a child can survive if taken from a woman's womb and generally applies to the third trimester. The Stodghill twins were past that point.

Also, that Point-Counterpoint feature in The Morning Call included a statement about the Roe v. Wade ruling often made by the pro-choice side of abortion issue. "This landmark ruling affirmed that the constitutionally protected right to privacy includes every woman's ability to make her own personal medical decisions," said Kim Custer of Planned Parenthood of Northeast, Mid-Penn & Bucks County.

There is no such provision anywhere in the U.S. Constitution or its Bill of Rights, and it is for that reason I always have opposed the Roe v. Wade ruling. The Supreme Court is required to base its rulings on the Constitution, but it based that ruling on a concept concocted out of thin air to accommodate a purely political goal.

If anybody wants to regulate abortion one way or the other, it has to be with legislation — a constitutional amendment or a federal or state law. To legislate through judicial fiat borders on treason, and it is essential to our system's integrity that the Roe ruling be reversed.

It's a shame that the entire abortion issue may boil down to a debate over hypocrisy.